


here in the cold, our eyes are blades

by cartographicalspine



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - The Wrath of Heaven, Gen, Hinterlands (Dragon Age), Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19060144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: a.k.athe only other option was hiding behind a shield and lavellan has no functioning sense of self-preservationSolas and the so-called Herald of Andraste watch each other intensely, drag out long, painful silences, pry at each other pointlessly, and learn absolutely nothing in the process. Also, Lavellan solves Solas' friendship puzzle and promptly breaks it.





	here in the cold, our eyes are blades

Battle still sings in the frost-laden air as Solas steps back a breath, a ragged, mortal sigh that startles him for two reasons: one, for his own audible weakness and two, for that separation of degree that has brought him all the closer to this realm. Strange, alien world that screams so loudly and yet cannot fill the deafening silence in his ears. Overhead, the sky churns in a blinding, swirling maelstrom, slowly ebbing before the next pulse hits. There are minutes between each one, shortening as the waves expand and grow. Change that’s out of his hand, uncontrolled and unrelenting.

Not even centuries of slumber could have prepared him for this.

The demons have dissipated, leaving behind residue and rags, vestigial remnants of their attempts at coherency in this twisted facsimile of a world. Not that he pities the denizens of that world any less, but pity is all he can manage at the moment. The Breach is still far, and his companions are out of sight. _That_ is his priority.

He takes a moment to examine his staff -clean the blade, adjust the binding at the grip- and then begins the lone trek up the slope where they were first ambushed by the sudden burst of light and demons. The frozen earth beneath the snow is torn from the upheaval, from battle, but it’s still for now. No stray pockets of energy, however, which strikes him as odd after feeling the surge of currents shift more erratically the higher they’ve climbed.

Skirting the edge of the slope, he looks eastward towards a stretch of dark woods, and then to his left a hand bursts out of the ravine, dragging bright red lines over the snow. He doesn’t even have the chance to feel alarm set in because it’s burning a familiar angry green. The rest of that familiar angry beacon follows soon after it, all streaks of dirt and blood and silver. The prisoner claws at the edge of the slope, panting harsh and strong in the aftermath of battle and not the first throes of death, though surely he will die to the brand upon his hand before long.

He glares up, eyes pale and rimmed with the smudges of whatever dark powder lined them days ago (his best guess is a week, generously), mouth a jagged wound in his face. Then the grim set of his gaze seems to notice Solas and he stills, glancing warily at the hand outstretched towards him.

“You’re alone,” the prisoner says, and Solas dredges up a name for him from what he’s eavesdropped off the spymaster’s reports.

“I found you, did I not?” he offers, and the elf whose name is Lavellan crooks a brow. Fair, he found Solas, but that is a minor technicality. “The others must be nearby; it isn’t a large area.”

Lavellan hesitates, then hefts up a sword haft-first for Solas’ waiting hand. He heaves himself up after Solas moves back with a curious eye on the blade. It’s old and worn, one of countless weapons brought down from the temple caverns after the Disciples of Andraste were finally uprooted from their mountain haven. With expert care and detail, it might be salvaged though the scabbard is lost, but the question is not about salvaging.

“How useful is this to you, really?”

With much less snow and dirt on him, Lavellan looks somehow colder but no less alive. In fact, the magic within his hand is beginning to crack and sputter in a rising swell, but he ignores it in favor of staring at Solas openly, like the first time they looked at each other within the closing of the bridgeside rift.

“It’s a large, heavy piece of metal between me and the demons. I’d say it’s pretty useful… _really_.”

If he seemed distant before, now he’s further, as lifeless and pale as every other living being Solas has crossed paths with since waking. Whatever spark of life he finds, it dies as suddenly in this barren landscape of what the world should be, the world he misses terribly. No, the question was never about salvage.

* * *

“You lied.” He’s drawn away from the viewing window on the near side of the golden orb atop the relic, but the question is not a question and not accusing, just probing. Curious. “Back at the rift, didn’t you?”

Lavellan, while not smiling, looks less haunted and ragged than before, even with the black smudges around his eyes (he's beginning to suspect they're purposefully smeared on the daily) and the bruises along his jaw. His hair falls windswept in twists and braids over his shoulders yet somehow manages to look less wild than before. The sword is slung over his shoulder in a new rigging and rolls with the shrug he gives Solas. “I have no training with this thing; it’s really difficult to call it useful. Why did you tell Cassandra that I wasn’t a mage?”

The two of them are alone on the hillside, watching Cassandra scout further south into the pass with Varric, who is likely tagging along only because she cannot stand him or for the promise of less vertically-inclined terrain. Solas admits that it may be a combination of both.

He looks back at Lavellan: cold, unapproachable Lavellan with his short, distant responses and scornful, bitter mouth. Lavellan who has breached the silence first, so he decides to mull the question over. He cannot find even a thread in him to be frightened, for whatever he thinks to have uncovered about Solas compares very little to the actual truth. A truth which nests within the tissues and ligaments of mortal Lavellan, inconvenient and unfortunate truth that he might uncover through death alone. For now, it has spared the Dalish elf his life when the Breach stopped expanding, which was not quite as much as Solas had hoped for but far less than the terrible alternative of no tools to ever heal the sky again. “An answer in exchange for an answer?”

“Really.”

“That’s your question?”

“And why not? What question were you hoping for?”

Solas smiles at the question, deciding that it skirts close enough to the real question Lavellan should have asked in order to find any useful answers. “Technically, a mage is an individual with the ability to expend mana, to control, shape, and interact with magic. You have not...”

“...done any of that,” Lavellan finishes. “Potential aside.”

“Yes, aside from ability and potential. It was simply a minor detail I deemed unnecessary to signal out, seeing as you had already made a point of eschewing magic for martial force.”

“Yes. About that.” He leans the sword against the metal frame on the relic, and Solas steps back to let him, watching unskilled hands flit free from the unwieldy burden and come to rest on one of the astrarium levers. Thumbing it idly, he glances over his shoulder with a long, ambiguous frown in his eyes. "If I decided to tell her? Where does that put you?”

“And what would that accomplish, exactly?” Solas has to wonder what his intentions are, for his bluff is obvious, but this is the longest Lavellan has ever spoken to someone of his own volition. The thought that he chose Solas is fascinating and self-satisfactory. “Aside from apparently casting doubt on my forthrightness? It would be simple enough to deny knowledge of it.”

Lavellan blinks wearily at him and hunches over the viewing window, giving something of a tired grunt as he hides his gaze from Solas. “It would, yes.”

“And then there is the matter of how well you actually carry your magic. It seems that you might have far less skill with it than the sword, and it goes without saying how well you wield that sword.”

“You're right, yes. I would not be able to defend myself with magic effectively once the ruse was up.”

With a little sigh, Solas watches him fiddle with the mechanisms and wonders at the point of the question, even as stubborn and self-sabotaging as the Dalish has proven to be. As the Dalish plural have proven to be, though he is under no illusions of Lavellan’s opinion on that topic and would prefer not to repeat their disastrous conversation within the alchemist’s cabin. Adan had looked fit to call the commander on them both just for a little silence in the workshop. But Lavellan had caved first, in a strange sort of turnabout on his own temper once it was clear that he would not suffer alone.

“You would not try to cast her blame on me,” Solas realizes, listening to the quiet, steady clatter of the gears falling into place. “Even if the weight of the lie was negligible. So why suggest such a thing?”

“Because I have never hidden my magic before?”

“Why would you not seek out a staff over a sword, then? Lack of training in both still places magic higher than physical force.”

The last gears in the mechanism click into their slots with a final thud, and the relic rotates along an axis and lights up along a series of grooves over its burnished surface before signaling a pair of opposite directions in the distance. Lavellan steps back and dusts his hands off before snatching up the strap of his sword’s rig, gaze flickering over to Solas. His eyes come alive for the first time, brighter than the sickly tinge from the Breach-ravaged sky in the morning daylight. Those are eyes that suit a smile, not the same closed-off expression Lavellan has worn since he first stirred after he was found at the Breach.

“There is no secret answer, really,” he admits to Solas, nodding in the general direction of the astrarium’s revealed points. “I grabbed the first thing I saw. But we both like to talk and this was a good way to make the wait more interesting while the others came back.”

“You like to _talk_.” Solas might have found the irony of the statement more amusing if he weren’t truly put out by the lack of any satisfaction in what he learned. “Alright. Now that we’ve established that you simply meant to mock me.”

Lavellan is partway down the rocky slope when he slows down and turns, taking a risky, graceful step back, then another, arms held up placatingly. “I solved your puzzle. You’re welcome.”

Another half-step that Solas wishes would send him tumbling down the hill, and he calls out, “ _that_ was meant to mock you.”

He hears Varric and Cassandra return before he actually sees them, mostly because he receives an earful of Varric’s loud, sarcastic brand of astonishment immediately upon Lavellan’s far-off reply. “Lavellan is actually talking again? Without trying to _murder_ you?”

Solas exhales heavily, reminding himself that once again this is a passing moment in the greater scheme of things. “It was not for lack of trying, certainly.”

Diversions and conversation evaporating into the air, he trails after their merry little traveling party deeper into the outskirts, frowning at the restless way the world moves around him. An incomplete part of reality, with half of its possibilities trapped away behind a veil, should one choose to look behind it. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter what any of them say in the end after all, distant, illusory flickers of the light he’s lost since the fall of the curtain, no matter what he believes he might see.

Still, there’s a part of him, however small, that admits it intrigues him to see Lavellan close up again and return to his customary stoicism despite all of Varric’s pestering. After how he had welcomed Solas’ conversation before, it was surprisingly...pleasing.


End file.
